Blockchain technology is taking over the world. It is an ingenious invention by a person or a group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 8 years, you have heard of Bitcoin. The underlying technology behind Bitcoin is called blockchain, a public ledger of all the Bitcoin transactions that ever happened on its network.

However, the use of blockchain is not limited to Bitcoin. There have been numerous projects that are making use of blockchain technology. The most famous of these is Ethereum, which is a simplified platform to let developers build apps (dApps) on the blockchain. Another prominent project using blockchain technology is Sia, a distributed cloud storage platform.

The idea for Sia was conceived back in 2013 at HackMIT, a hackathon hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The idea is to allow anyone to rent out their storage space and in return reward them for their contribution. Unlike standard cloud storage, like AWS, Dropbox and Azure, Sia is completely decentralized.

At the time of writing, Siacoin’s (the token used in the smart contracts to pay the hosts) market cap is over $200 million. Today there are very few options companies have for storage. They could either go for something like AWS or Azure, but they are not decentralized and are prone to attacks and vulnerabilities.

The downside of these services is that they are centralized and quite expensive. When you put your data into cloud it’s the company that controls all your data. Recent trends, database leaks, and privacy policy changes have showed repeatedly that corporations cannot be trusted.

Instead of hosting everything on the central server, Sia's blockchain technology will decentralize file storage and make it open source. Sia will also let companies host their own private decentralized cloud and sell that as a service to their customers. This will significantly reduce the costs for both companies and consumers. With Sia, the storage would be decentralized as each user would contribute their own share of resources, making it as secure as virtual data rooms.

That being said, Sia does have some competitors, Storj and Maidsafe to name a few. What makes Sia unique is the ability to create a smart contract that would ensure the host is paid for their services. In a nutshell, when a file contract is created, the renter and the host both put Siacoins into the contract. The host gets the Siacoins only if they still have the data when the contract expires. This could very well be the beginning of the “future of hosting” in which there are no central servers.

The team behind Sia is extremely talented and their roadmap looks very promising. Recently the team launched Obelisk, an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). It's basically a chip that does one thing really well. In this case it’d be mining Siacoin.

When you’re planning on competing with the likes of Dropbox and AWS, you better make sure you are fully prepared. The bigger picture of Sia is to provide a secure decentralized closed storage with zero downtime and 100% uptime. Currently anyone can mine Siacoin with a GPU. Miners can easily change GPUs to mine other hashing algorithms. The whole idea of Obelisk ASIC is to secure the Sia network forever. Since Obelisk is made to mine only Siacoin, its hashing power is significantly stronger than the GPU. This will exponentially strengthen Sia’s blockchain and prevent it from any attacks.

What makes Sia unique from its competitors is the fact that it holds payment for the host in escrow until the host has fulfilled the file contract. It's heavily focused on price efficiency and data speed. There is an intuitive calculator on Sia’s website that tells you how much Sia and other cloud storages will cost you to store data.

Siacoin looks very promising. Its value has gone up 2400% over the past year. At the time of writing, the price for one coin is 1 cent, and there are $27 billion Siacoins in circulation. Clearly this is just the beginning for blockchain companies like Sia. In the coming years, true disruption will take place and blockchain startups will be at the forefront.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend 21st Cloud Expo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

Every Global 2000 enterprise in the world is now integrating cloud computing in some form into its IT development and operations. Midsize and small businesses are also migrating to the cloud in increasing numbers.

Companies are each developing their unique mix of cloud technologies and services, forming multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures and deployments across all major industries. Cloud-driven thinking has become the norm in financial services, manufacturing, telco, healthcare, transportation, energy, media, entertainment, retail and other consumer industries, and the public sector.

Cloud Expo is the single show where technology buyers and vendors can meet to experience and discus cloud computing and all that it entails. Sponsors of Cloud Expo will benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through:

Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers.

Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours

Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 35-minute technical session

Online advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications

Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage.

All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades.

With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-4, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is on the right path to Digital Transformation.

Delegates to Cloud Expo |@ThingsExpo will be able to attend 8 simultaneous, information-packed education tracks.

There are over 120 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content.

Join Cloud Expo |@ThingsExpo conference chair Roger Strukhoff (@IoT2040), October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, for three days of intense Enterprise Cloud and 'Digital Transformation' discussion and focus, including Big Data's indispensable role in IoT, Smart Grids and (IIoT) Industrial Internet of Things, Wearables and Consumer IoT, as well as (new) Digital Transformation in Vertical Markets.

Financial Technology - or FinTech - Is Now Part of the @CloudExpo Program!

Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 21st Cloud Expo |@ThingsExpo October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will find fresh new content in a new track called FinTech, which will incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and blockchain into one track.

Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses.

FinTech brings efficiency as well as the ability to deliver new services and a much improved customer experience throughout the global financial services industry. FinTech is a natural fit with cloud computing, as new services are quickly developed, deployed, and scaled on public, private, and hybrid clouds.

More than US$20 billion in venture capital is being invested in FinTech this year. @CloudExpo is pleased to bring you the latest FinTech developments as an integral part of our program, starting at the 21st International Cloud Expo October 31 - November 2, 2017 in Silicon Valley, and June 12-14, 2018, in New York City.

The upcoming 21st International @CloudExpo | @ThingsExpo, October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, and June 12-14, 2018, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY announces that its Call For Papers for speaking opportunities is open.

Harry Trott is an IT consultant from Perth, WA. He is currently working on a long term project in Bangalore, India. Harry has over 7 years of work experience on cloud and networking based projects. He is also working on a SaaS based startup which is currently in stealth mode.

Cloud computing is Internet based development and use of computer technology. It is a style of computing in which typically real-time scalable resources are provided 'as a service' over the Internet to users who need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure ("in the cloud") that supports them.

Cloud Expo

Cloud Computing & All That
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Cloud computing is become a norm within enterprise IT.

The competition among public cloud providers is red hot, private cloud continues to grab increasing shares of IT budgets, and hybrid cloud strategies are beginning to conquer the enterprise IT world.

Big Data is driving dramatic leaps in resource requirements and capabilities, and now the Internet of Things promises an exponential leap in the size of the Internet and Worldwide Web.

The world of SDX now encompasses Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) as the technology world prepares for the Zettabyte Age.

Add the key topics of WebRTC and DevOps into the mix, and you have three days of pure cloud computing that you simply cannot miss.

Delegates will leave Cloud Expo with dramatically increased understanding the entire scope of the entire cloud computing spectrum from storage to security.

Cloud Expo - the world's most established event - offers a vast selection of 130+ technical and strategic Industry Keynotes, General Sessions, Breakout Sessions, and signature Power Panels. The exhibition floor features 100+ exhibitors offering specific solutions and comprehensive strategies. The floor also features two Demo Theaters that give delegates the opportunity to get even closer to the technology they want to see and the people who offer it.

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